Countdown to Wagons West

Hi Everyone,
As threatened, here it is: my blog, which will document Billy Bob Danny Joe's and my trip out to Port Townsend in a 31 ft RV (with slideout! - stay tuned, you'll soon know more than you ever wanted to about RVs.)  My bedside reading these days is Trailer Life and Exploring America by RV which are chock full of useful info about life on the road.  So far I've covered: Should You Carry a Gun in Your RV?; Campground Etiquette  (which sounds like an oxymoron but apparently isn't); Should You Sleep by The Side of The Road?; The Difference Between Black Water And Grey Water (trust me, you don't want to skip this chapter); What Kind of Wardrobe is Right?; 13 Notable Dates in RV History; and How to Give Backing-Up Directions Without Destroying Your Marriage.

Ours is 2nd from right - see the slideout?

These last few days of life in New York are making it so very easy to leave.  Four days of temps in the 90s with increasing humidity each day in the lead up to the arrival on Friday of Hurricane Earl (even the National Weather Service has gone Trailer Trash.)  Meanwhile, in PT the forecast is for temps in the low 70s ....  Did I mention how much I hate the heat?  And the humidity?  And the smell from the Elizabeth New Jersey oil tanks when the wind blows from the southwest?  And the smell of the rotting garbage in the bins that line the sidewalk on the way to the subway? 

Alongside the rotting garbage ....

Ah, the subway.  The subway in summer.  There's an art to surviving the subway in summer.  It involves mouth breathing and using your ears.  You wait at the entrance and listen for an arriving train (hoping it's going in the right direction - pros can tell the difference) and then dash down.  If you're lucky the train will be just pulling in as you descend, sending a blast of warm, urine/rat/garbage scented air at you which you actually welcome as it might halt the trickle of sweat that's running down your back before it reaches your butt crack.  If it doesn't because you haven't timed it right, and you then have to wait on the platform which is always 10 degrees hotter than outside and that sweat just keeps on rolling until the bloody train finally pulls in, then DON'T SIT DOWN even if by some miracle there is a seat.  If you do, the sweat will seep through your knickers and your pants/skirt and you will be sporting a stripe when you stand up that will either earn you pitying looks from the more charitably inclined or sneers of disgust and snorts of derision from the blessedly few summer school - i.e. stupid - students on the train (the ONLY positive thing about summer in NY as far as I'm concerned.)

So, yes, the weather and Cousin Earl are conspiring to make leaving easy.  There are other things I won't miss about New York.  The constant noise.  Even at 3 in the morning it's never truly quiet.  There's the background hum of the traffic on the elevated Brooklyn Queens Expressway, there's always a siren somewhere, and the thumping bass of a souped up car stereo.  You never get the sort of quiet you find in Maine, the kind where you can hear your own pulse - always a bit unnerving at first, as is discovering that I'm married to a really noisy chewer.  It takes me a couple of days to stop being acutely aware of the sounds of my husband's mastication.  Maybe a little bit of background noise is not such a bad thing.

But the energy driving all this noise is one thing I won't miss.  When I first came to New York I loved it, but I was 27 then and now I just find it exhausting.  This is a town for young people with the energy to compete, or older people who have plenty of money and can float above the fray.

Everyone's been asking me what I'll miss about New York.  Here goes:

Poppy and Tess at 6 am this morning

Prospect Park with the dogs at dawn - but never on a Monday after the weekend picnickers leave piles of trash and chicken bones strewn everywhere and the rats get really nasty.  In the Fall, Winter and early Spring it really is a joy to be there when the sun comes up, the grass is wet with dew and patches of mist float above the meadow and there's no one else around. 

Moaning about middle age and menopause with Margie over beer and curly fries at the White Horse Tavern.  Laughing with Lah-weeze about teenage trials and tribulations. Tea at the St. Regis with Diane. Martinis with Gillian (oh, the lingering shame.) Susan's wicked sense of humor (the funniest librarian ever!)  Friends, all of you - you'd better come visit or else, and when you do, bring ....

Bialys - but only Kossars from the lower east side which apparently don't travel well as the Fairway in Brooklyn can't get them but the Upper West Side Fairway can (go figure.)  And maybe a few bagels, but only from the Bagel Hole on 7th Ave. in Park Slope which has the best bagels in NY and BONUS was the place I saw my one and only (in 24 years - how pathetic am I?) genuine celebrity sighting.  John Turturro was in line getting HIS bagels.  Okay, I have seen other actors, but Richard Belzer I don't count as he stands on the sidewalk in his all black, sunglassed "I'm A Celebrity, Notice Me!" garb until someone finally asks him for an autograph and he can move to the next street corner.  And I did see fellow Park Slope resident John Hodgman from the Daily Show with his kids, ordering a hamburger and fries at the local diner, but he is so low key he doesn't really count.  But that's it.  Everyone else spots Madonna, Richard Gere, Al Pacino, Harvey hubba, hubba Keitel (when I worked in the same building as him I wore holey tights to work for weeks just on the offchance I might be stuck in the elevator with him and, well, you know that scene from The Piano that involves a pair of tights with a hole in it ...)

Supermarket choices.  Oh, Fairway!  (and the flirty deli counter guy) Oh, Whole Foods! 

The spices at Kalustyan's. The just made, still warm mozzarella at Russo's.  Congee from Big Wong's in Chinatown.  The pastrami at Katz's (Send A Salami to Your Boy in The Army) Deli on the Lower East Side.

Neil, Dan and Max chow down at Katz's - is that a sandwich or what!

Ordering in.  Free delivery.  Greek, Thai, Indian or Turkish tonight?  "Okay, twenty minutes."

That's about it I think.  Prospect Park, my New York friends, supermarket and food heaven, ordering in and bialys.  Okay, and maybe this: